And I am back with another chapter! Hope you all enjoy!

Jason

"Artemis?" Jason whispers, perplexed. The amazon stares disapprovingly down at him.

"The fuck he just say?" Asks Ernie loudly to Frank, who shakes his head in disinterest.

Jason's head begins to spin, and his mouth begins to sweat. He swallows hard, trying to force the bile back into his stomach. He looks down, closes his eyes hard and holds his breath. Someone ripped his chest tube out some time ago and his chest burns with the effort it takes to keep his composure. His vision is going in and out of focus as the world tilts around him. Artemis squats down to his eye level, and it's all he can do to raise his head without vomiting.

"Breathe." She says darkly, as though immensely disappointed in him. He does as he's told, taking a breath as deep as he dares. The plane is starting to ascend now, and soon he'll have the altitude pressure to contend with, so he just locks eyes with Artemis and tries to steady his breathing. His eyes flood with emotion and she scowls at him.

"Don't cry." She warns. "Remember who you are. You are the infamous crime boss Red Hood. Pull yourself together." She hisses, her glare unwavering.

He wants to tell her that he hasn't been that person in a long time, that he isn't quite sure he can find that version of him in his tumble of a brain right now. But she wasn't asking, so he wills himself to follow her instructions. He blinks the tears away and tries to center himself the way Durca had taught him when he spent time with the All-Caste, slowing his breathing and releasing all sensation from his body. But just as the pain had begun to release it's hold on him, the plane hits a pocket of turbulence, and his chair is thrown upward before it crashes back to the ground.

The strength leaves him at once, and unconsciousness beckons so sweetly, so gently. All he wants to do is succumb to its warmth, let the pain recede. He groans as his nerves ignite and static overcomes all sensations. As his eyes close and his body goes lax, Frank shoves something up his nose that rips the sweet gentleness from his grasp. He wakes with a start and can't help as his breath hitches painfully in his chest. Frank laughs and puts the smelling salts back into a pocket of his cargo pants.

"Nu uh uh!" Ernie says lightly, wagging his finger in front of Jason's strained expression. "No sleeping for you!"

Spiky returns from the front of the plane where she had been sitting, her muscular form seeming somehow more intimidating than before, maybe due to the brass knuckles that now adorn her fists. Jason feels he should be afraid of this woman, but he's just so tired, he feels as though the life has drained out of his body. Looking down he finds that's not too far from the truth. His bandages are past soaked with his blood, and he finds himself sitting in a puddle of the metallic liquid. He coughs once, painfully, and a bloody dribble runs down his chin.

This catches Spiky's attention and she rushes Jason, yanking away what remains of his hospital gown to reveal his injuries. She curses venomously beneath her breath and looks up into Jason's eyes which have lost focus again. His head is jerked upwards and it takes him several seconds to realize it's because she has a fistful of his hair. She examines his slack expression and releases his head, which lolls forward. Turning on Ernie and Frank she begins to shout viscously at them.

"Look at him! How in the everloving FUCK and I supposed to get information out of a dead man?!" An argument ensues, and all three of them begin poking and prodding Jason, but he hardly notices. His brain has begun to provide colorful flashes of light that dance before his eyes. Maybe this is it. He thinks, nearly managing a smile. Although unpleasant and quiet, this is a vast improvement over the last time he died. Slowly Jason begins to lose sensation in his extremities and as the fuzzy floating sensation takes over his mind he just catches Artemis reaching out her hands.

The darkness comes quickly, wrapping itself around Jason's mind, pulling him from his body. He feels his mother's touch and leans into it, savoring the smell of the lemon scented body wash that she used to use. The nothingness is coming in fast and Jason all but runs to it, desperate for escape. But yet again it's torn from his grasp and he's forced back into the pain and brightness.

Frank has shoved the smelling salts so far up Jason's nose and he vaguely registers how badly they make his sinuses burn. He gasps awake, coughing, groaning in confusion and agony. Spiky stabs a needle into his chest and his body ignites instantly. Adrenaline pounds though his skin and all he can hear is the rushing of his blood as it roars in his ears.

They were apparently prepared for something like this, as Jason watches them hook him up to a blood bag and Saline IV. His entire torso has been wrapped in gauze and compression bandages and he can't help but wincing in discomfort. His breathing is still too fast and his heart rattles harshly against his ribs. Artemis smiles grimly from behind where Spiky has dropped down to catch her breath, her dark eyes trained on him.

Spiky leans in close to Jason's face, searching his eyes for something. He just stares back at her, trying to keep his eyelids from drooping. Even though the salts and the adrenaline have made his body alert, exhaustion still seeps into his limbs. He manages a smug grin and narrows his eyes into a glare. This look used to send goons running to their therapists when he was first out of the pit, with all of that bloodlust thundering through his veins. But Spiky just heaves a heavy sigh and sits back, shaking her head and tousling her hair in agitation.

Jason stays, sitting slumped forward against his restraints for the rest of the flight. He slips in and out of awareness, often letting his mind take him to a distant memory. He spends an absorbent amount of time back in crime alley teaching the street kids self defense and buying them all pizza. There's a lot of laughing and them trying to climb all over him. He took them all back to an empty warehouse that he owns and showed them how to sneak in, where the blankets are hidden, and where the landline is with one of his cell numbers written neatly beside it in sharpie.

He had never really had a chance to be soft, he'd always had shards of glass and bloody knuckles. He couldn't afford to be gentle, he needed people to be afraid of hurting him. But these kids, they were different. He bets they've been wondering about him, but they're probably safer not knowing what's been going on. There are only about seven or eight of them in total, and deep down a part of him hopes, beyond reason, that they've found themselves a home somehow.

The plane lands roughly, jolting Jason out of his stupor.

"C'mon sunshine." Says Ernie with a smile, leaning down to unlock the wheels on Jason's wheelchair.

As they wheel him out of the plane he's met with a smoggy pollutant filled sky. The smell of motor oil, garbage and wet concrete fill his nostrils. He can hear the distant train, and even now in this broad daylight, the sounds of fighting people. From this vantage point it wouldn't be easy for anyone to recognize where they are, but he'd know this place anywhere.

He's home.

He soaks up the sounds and smells and the warm sunlight on his skin. The air is heavy with moisture but still, he basks in the openness, sure that it will be the last time he'll ever see it. He just has enough time to fill his lungs and whisper a goodbye to his city, before a heavy cloth covers his eyes and he's left in darkness.

They wheel him around for an indeterminable amount of time, into a building that faintly reeks of sour fish guts and gasoline. Jason judges it to be one of the warehouses by the Eastern docks, there are quite a few that are hidden away beneath ground, where rich assholes would hide their priceless kills and fancy boats. Chances are he's in one of those, probably not too far from the Bowery, where his old patrol route would be. A strange pang of nostalgia strikes his chest and mixed with the rotten fish smell and the disorientation of being blindfolded, dizziness overtakes him.

His mind is still foggy, but less so than it was on the plane. Thanks to the surplus of blood and the shot of adrenaline they've pumped into him, he's probably more coherent than he's been in months. His body still aches, particularly his left shoulder, and his head which is still wrapped in dizziness, but he's feeling more capable than he's been in a long time. Maybe he'll be able to get out of here after all, and find a nice and peaceful way to exit this world on his own accord.

They come to a stop and someone snatches the blindfold off of Jason's eyes. He squints into the dim light, trying to orient himself in these new surroundings. As he suspected, he's in the underground part of a dockside warehouse, although a relatively small one. There are old and forgotten fishing boats laying in wait all around him. Frank, Ernie and Spiky have him set up under a naked lightbulb that hangs carelessly from the rafters above him. He's pretty out in the open, boats and old tools cluttered around him on all sides. Before him stand the trio of goons and a few rusted metal work tables decorated in everything from medical supplies to handheld tools to a car battery.

From what he can see Artemis hasn't followed them from the plane, just another symptom of the concussion and the blood loss he supposes, and even though he's sure she wasn't real, he misses her.

"Alright," Spiky begins, dragging a chair from behind her and sitting down to face Jason at eye level. "Let's make this easy, okay?"

Jason stares back boredly, managing a half shrug as if he couldn't possibly care less. She tries to keep her composure but it's clear this ticks her off immensely. She breathes heavily out of her nose and darkens her glare.

"We just wanna know one thing Mr. Hood. Who are you?" Spiky asks slowly.

And just like that everything makes perfect sense. Turns out the first parts of Jason's plan to over take Iceberg Lounge went off without a hitch. These three before him belong to Penguin, their identities made clear by the warehouse they chose. Penguin controls these docks, and if he's seeing things right, one of the yachts behind Frank's left shoulder literally has his name on it. After Jason revealed himself to Penguin that night, he had fired that blank into his face, effectively destroying parts of his memories. And now with Jason's hair overgrown in cascades of curls over his forehead, his face half obscured by bruising and swelling and stained gauze, nearly two feet taller and 150 pounds heavier, it would be hard to recognize him as the young ward of Bruce Wayne. And since none of his finger prints, blood samples, or retinal scans exist anymore on any platform, no one could look at him now and connect him to that young boy he was.

A sickly laugh bubbles up through Jason's throat, wet and metallic. He begins to cackle, blood dribbling down his chin, bouncing off of the blood stained concrete around him. As he laughs, folding into himself from the pain that bursts from his ribs, he just catches the fear on the two men's faces, how they step back from him slowly. But Spiky remains as impassive as ever.

Jason slowly regains his composure, slowing his breathing and glancing up to look at all three of them. He smiles, more out of relief than anything, and a bloody dribble drips from his crooked grin.

Jason mulls over the question in his head for a moment. How perfect could this be? He's finally been given the perfect opportunity to go out with both middle fingers up, to cement the name Red Hood in fear and mystery forever. Honestly, it has exceeded his wildest hopes.

So, who is he?

"Nobody." He answers. Then he's laughing again.

Laughing, laughing, laughing.

Hope you all liked it and are enjoying the story as a whole so far. I've been very busy with college but I promise that I won't just abandon this fic, I have come way too far for that. So even if it takes a while, there will always be another chapter.

As always, you can ask me questions in the comments if you want, and you can also find me on Tumblr under monroestyne and can talk to me there.

Until next time, MS